Bennet Foddy's Sexy Hiking HD

Just in case you didn’t get the news:

bfod made a remake/tribute to Sexy Hiking.
Unity! Hi-res graphics! Procedural hammer-in-arms animation!

Available in the humble store soon. Steam on Dec. 7

it’s so good

I haven’t been able to get more than halfway

I don’t think it’s out yet FYI

but based on the testing build it is easily one of my favourite games of the year in a really strong year

Ah, ok. Since you said you played it I thought it was out. Didn’t feel like fact-checking on the humble store lol

D:

Sexy hikers never give up

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i dont like the new aesthetic

it’s really good in practice, it looks (and acts) like worms terrain that was generated on top of a 1bit bitmap sketch

it’s definitely up there with his best work and a pretty good expression of bennett’s design philosophy imo (which is one of the most coherent & important out there)

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I have become obsessed with this game. I have played it for seven hours now, and i have just reached a point which I have no idea if I will ever pass (based on what I have learned so far, and the geometry of the level above me). Of course I’ve since fallen, I guess that’s the point. If I return to my course next year, I think I want this game to be the central text that my master’s thesis focuses around.

Here is a poem I wrote yesterday about the game:

four hours, square one.
if i were to plot a shape with a corner
for each hour i’ve spent aloof or distant in digital worlds,
it would resemble a circle.

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I’ve watched tim and bennet’s stream and I think I don’t need to play this game now

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Same. But I was never going to play it in the first place. It’s just not the kind of videogaming I do but I enjoyed the stream!

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I fear being unable to play for long considering how painful I always found stylus controls on the DS and some of the more waggle-intensive Wii games.

If Bennet wants to hurt me, Bennet has to come get me!

Eh, I think the experience of failing and flailing with the controls is significantly different than watching someone do it. Although you’re likely to already know if you’ll like that experience or not, which is probably what you’re commenting on?

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Yes, kinda.

To put it another way: assuming bfod played until the ending, the stream showed me what I couldn’t otherwise get without playing (how the level looks like and what to expect). The other component of the experience (the frustration of losing all your progress by a bad move or glitch of the mouse) is something I can imagine on my own.

In that sense, I can say I think I get a complete-enough picture without having to play the game.

I almost never rage or get mad at single player games when I lose, so I can pretty much claim to have “gotten over it” already.

Boooooooo

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One of the most interesting and rewarding parts of playing the game is the experience of learning the vocabulary of the game (in terms of what can be done, how to avert failure, when to iterate on a strategy and when to construct an entirely new approach). I’m reluctant to liken the experience of learning to a Souls game, but there’s definitely an element of that at work, and it’s one of the game’s aspects that I think makes it really special and pertinent to contemporary games culture (particularly its toxicity and privilege, recent Cuphead discourse comes to mind). It’s kind of wonderful to engage with something so entirely hostile that is essentially a bizarre medium specific essay.

What I mean is: it’s a thing you should play.

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I’m pretty good at this. I watched Bennet Foddy stream He Own God Damn Game: Now I am keen to a specific set of tactics I have set out to use to dismantle this game.

The person this game is made to hurt…is me.

Also I like how tim describes it as a desk toy for freaks, I’ve had a lot of fun squeezing in some time for this this week whenever I am kind of idle

I bought this game yesterday and have not played it yet, but I am looking forward to it!

Can you turn the tedious monologue off?